Nvidia and five tech giants now command 30% of S&P 500 Index
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The uptick in the S&P 500 Index has been driven by Nvidia, which has rallied 20 per cent since a bullish sales forecast last week.
PHOTO: REUTERS
San Francisco – The six biggest US companies now command a greater share of the S&P 500 Index than ever before.
Microsoft, Apple, Nvidia, Alphabet, Amazon.com and Meta Platforms account for 30 per cent of the benchmark, up from about 26 per cent at the start of 2024, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The S&P 500 is weighted by stocks’ market capitalisations.
The uptick has been driven by Nvidia, which has rallied 20 per cent since a bullish sales forecast last week showed that spending on artificial intelligence computing remains strong.
The chipmaker has added US$1.6 trillion (S$2.16 trillion) in market value in 2024 and is close to overtaking Apple as the world’s second-most valuable company.
Large companies have always dominated the S&P 500, but not to this extent. For most of the past three decades, the percentage weighting of the six biggest stocks in the benchmark was in the teens. It was not until 2020 that the concentration exceeded 20 per cent.
In another sign of a shift in the market, even at the height of the dot.com bubble in 2000, only three of the biggest six were technology companies – Microsoft, Cisco Systems and Intel. The other three were General Electric, Exxon Mobil and Walmart. BLOOMBERG
